The Price
by toonsta
Summary: Everything comes at a cost... love is no exception. Whoever said that 'love don't cost a thing' got it all wrong; what they should have explained is that sometimes love- it’s worth the price.


**Summary:** Everything comes at a cost... love is no exception. Whoever said that 'love don't cost a thing' got it all wrong; what they should have explained is that sometimes love- it's worth the price.

This story is dedicated to Amelie... who inspired this story; who sent her beloved copy of Twilight all the way across the sea for me, bringing me many hours of joy and introducing me to a world that I find excessively difficult to vacate; for hours and hours of silly MSN conversations and for being the best sort-of editor/contributer in the universe. You're AWESOME ;)

**The Price**

Sometimes, Edward wonders what it is that Bella misses about being human. Wonders what it is that she has lost that she would want back. He knows that she misses her mother… but she will never allow him to _see_ what she gave up for him, what she longs for and has lost for his sake, in those precious moments when he can see her thoughts.

His family does not have the same privacy… the same privilege. They cannot keep secrets from him.

Emmett most misses the simplicity of being human. He misses being able to follow his desires rather than suppress them and, more than that, being able to be what he was, no pretenses. Now he must play a part almost daily putting his 'I am what I am, take it or leave it' personality on hold.

Esme and Rosalie's losses are similar. Esme misses the child she had; Rosalie misses the children she might have had. Their desires, though so similar, manifest in ways that couldn't be more different… Esme loves and mothers many while Rosalie feels jealousy and resentment.

Alice misses nothing, because she remembers nothing. But sometimes she wishes she knew more about that life… and sometimes she thinks it might be nice to be surprised once in a while.

Jasper misses the surety. He misses the confidence that he'd had in himself and that others had had in him as a commander. He misses not feeling weak and barely in control of his desires.

What Carlisle misses is perhaps the most admirable. Even with his perfect control he misses not having to fear himself, not being something that is worthy of being feared. And he regrets sometimes, that he cannot do all he is able to do; regrets that suspicion and fear prevent him from being the doctor he is capable of being. Subconsciously, he is driven to atone… not for his sins but for his very nature, and for the sins of all of their kind. Ironically, it is the necessity of protecting by secrecy the very humans he would aid that prevents him from fulfilling his potential for healing.

Before Bella Edward had not missed much. He had arrogantly missed the lack of boredom and tedium that had haunted him. After he had fallen in love with her all of that changed… then he would have done anything to be human because there were a thousand human things he'd wanted.

He had wished he could touch her without fear of hurting her. He had wished he could be near her without being overwhelmed by his thirst. He had wished he could hold her close and keep her warm when she was cold and that he could spend the day in the sunlight with her in public… perhaps in a park or on the beach; like a normal human couple. He had wished he could grow old with her and loathed the unchanging existence that had been foisted upon him almost as much as he loved it for allowing him to meet her; to have even the handful of moments that they had been given together.

And then the handful of moments they had been given had been stretched into a forever. Perhaps it would have been cheating if it hadn't come at a price.

Now there are things he misses about her.

Strangely he misses her blush… and all the beautiful little expressions that once made her face so easily readable to him; his open book. He misses the colour of her eyes… the deep chocolate of them. Though they are still windows to her soul, and beautiful because of that soul he still almost expects to see chocolate brown whenever she turns to meet his eyes. He misses the clumsiness that was so much a part of her… sometimes it's still difficult to reconcile the elegance and grace of his wife with the woman, or rather the girl, he fell in love with.

He misses watching her sleep; seeing her that relaxed and unguarded and hearing her unconscious thoughts. He misses her innocence… the girlishness and childishness that seem to have disappeared in her transformation, though he passionately loves the woman she has become.

He misses having the excuse to protect her… and not having to hear her smilingly say 'I'm far more dangerous than anything out there' or some equivalent every time he expressed worries over her safety. Oh how he wishes that the statement were true. And there is an un-nameable emotion, far stronger than fear, that almost stirs his still heart when he allows himself to see that one day this attitude may be her downfall. His downfall. Never, even when she was human, had she failed so completely to reassure him.

He misses being able to keep track of her so very easily by listening to her human noises… her bare feet padding across the landing to the bathroom she shared with Charlie, the buzz of her electric toothbrush, the absentminded tapping of her pencil in class, the bumps and thumps and clangs that told him she was pottering around in Charlie's kitchen, the soothing whooshing of her breathing… the constant beating of her heart.

He had loved to listen to the cadence of her heart. Its steady thump was a constant reassurance. When she was in danger it was a calming and directing force… focusing his mind; a point to concentrate on. All that had mattered in those times was that Bella's heart kept beating.

In the times in between it had been a source of joy… a heart that inexplicably, amazingly beat for him. He loved to hear it speed up when he smiled at her, 'dazzled her'… or when he touched her or told her how he felt about her. He marveled that he had the power to influence that heart. He loved how it beat against his chest when he pulled her close… as if he had a heart beat again too. In a way it was true… her heart was his heart too.

He knew the sound of it as well as he knew the sound of her voice… could pick it out in a crowd just as easily as he could pick out Alice or Jasper's thoughts. Before her he had measured time in decades, then he'd met her and suddenly her heart beat had become his measure of time. He could set his clock by it.

She was still his Bella, still the woman he loved… and now there were a thousand more things to love about her, and though sometimes he nostalgically wishes that she would trip over a tree root in the forest he selfishly wouldn't give this up for the world. Because he loves that he gets to witness her amazing control, control that allows for comparison only with Carlisle's. Because he would endure the pain of transformation a million times over to be allowed the access to her thoughts (and the euphoria that access brings him) that she now willingly gives him. Because she has given him a family… a place in the world as her husband and the father of her child and with that given him the greatest joy and fulfillment he has ever known.

There may be many things he misses and many things he regrets… but he has her, she in essence is still the same, and he would make any sacrifice if it meant they could be together.

* * *

When the pain is over and she first allows herself to get up… to be a vampire, there is nothing but amazing newness. Everything is fresh and exciting and wonderful and there is no time for regret… there is no time to miss anything about being human because she was human only a few days before and it was no fun at all! Pregnancy was not something she would ever miss.

Clarity comes slowly to her sharp mind.

There is so much to celebrate that there seems nothing to mourn.

But in time she learns the value of what she has lost. She learns the meaning of sacrifice.

At first it's the obvious things she misses. She misses her mother. She finds herself half way through dialing her number one day, wanting only to cry on the phone to somebody who understands just how hard it can be to have a toddler. She remembers before she can key in the last few digits that she can't talk to her mother about having a toddler… her mother doesn't know she has a toddler. She runs half way to Seattle before she lets herself cry.

Only she can't cry. All she is now capable of is gut wrenching sobs that do nothing to relieve the burning sensation behind her eyes or the grief in her cold heart.

She misses being unafraid of herself next. She had naively believed that the better her control became the less afraid she would be of hurting someone. That is not the case. If anything her fear grows as she slowly realizes her full potential. It is there constantly in the back of her mind… the absolute terror of what she could do; of the split second of loosing control that could cost someone their life.

It is this terror that sometimes makes her long for the simplicity of her human mind.

Though being able to think of hundreds of things at once has its advantages, it also tires her and haunts her in a way that nothing in her human life ever did. Her capacity for sorrow, for worry, has been increased a hundred fold along with her capacity to remember and to be happy… and all her thoughts swirl at once so that life is constantly bittersweet.

It is the small things that she misses most slowly.

She misses sleep… the sweet oblivion of it; the restfulness. Now there is no easy cure for weariness.

She misses eating; misses the habits around meals that she had always found so soothing and the quiet companionship of eating with others. She misses being able to eat with her father and even with other humans. It's ridiculous, but she always feels sad when she has to tell Charlie she's already eaten. And she misses enjoying meals… misses not having to force herself to drink animal blood which is anything but appealing.

She misses her body. It's silly, but when she looks in the mirror the person that stares out at her just doesn't feel like her. She grows slowly accustomed to Super-Bella-in-the-mirror, but sometimes she still wishes for her too pointy chin… for her own brown eyes. She wishes for them most when her supernatural beauty garners her unwanted attention.

She misses not pretending, even though she had to do that as a human too. She misses not having to pretend to be normal… not having to remember to fidget and to talk slowly and to move slowly and to shift her weight. She misses knowing that her pretenses are believable and for the most part believed. She misses meeting Charlie's eyes and not seeing the look of intense worry, surpassing normal fatherly concern, mixed with regret and disappointment in his eyes.

It's a seemingly meaningless thing, but she misses being able to hug Jake without cringing at his smell and having him do the same.

She misses being able to go out in public in the sunshine; regrets the loss of her silly childhood dream of one day living right on the beach. She wishes she could take Renesmee down to La Push in summer and watch her and Jake build sandcastles and go treasure hunting in the tidal pools.

It's Renesmee she finally learns to grieve for the most. Every second, every day is precious and goes by too fast. Her baby turns too quickly into her little girl who turns too quickly into a teenager and then a grown woman. And it feels as though they have been robbed... robbed of the opportunity to really enjoy her childhood, to witness and celebrate every milestone, to take pictures of her first day of school and seventh birthday party at which there should have been a class full of running screaming children, a pony and a cake she would eat instead of a bottle of O-neg. Bella hates that her daughter never believed in Santa, never went to school, never had a chance at normal or a snowball's hope in hell of retaining her innocence for any length of time. And though her daughter never really knows what she's missing, sometimes she wears the same whistful 'I wonder what that would have been like' look as Alice when they pass a human family with a little girl Renesmee's age resting comfortably on her mother's hip.

Often Bella misses parts of the life she once lead… but she would give it all up all over again in a heartbeat (perhaps a second would be a more accurate phrase) for him… for this. For this life and this love that is so much bigger than all the 'can't's that came with it.

Sometimes she wishes they could be normal people with normal problems and normal lives, but in her heart she knows that normal was never part of the deal with Edward. She knows that in 'normal' she would have died being crushed by Tyler Crowley's car, having never met him because he would have died almost a century before that of Spanish Influenza. So she'll gratefully accept her abnormal reality… joyfully take every benefit and drawback Edward brought with him into her life.

**AN:** I hope you all enjoyed my first Twilight fanfic and I would love it if you left some feedback (promise to reply)! Constructive criticism is most welcome... feel free to tell me if you hated it but please tell me why. Prizes for everyone who manages to pick out the Alias reference... which I blame on my sister who was doing an Alias marathon while I wrote this! I also have another Twilight story in the pipeline so let me know if you'd be interested in it!

Thank you so much for reading to the end! :)


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